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Although Mendel chose seven unrelated traits in peas to study gene segregation, most traits involve multiple gene interactions that create a spectrum of phenotypes. When the interaction of various genes or alleles at different locations influences a phenotype, this is called epistasis. Epistasis often involves one gene masking or interfering with the expression of another (antagonistic epistasis). Epistasis often occurs when different genes are part of the same biochemical pathway. The...
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Directional epistasis is common in morphological divergence.

Salomé Bourg1, Geir H Bolstad2, Donald V Griffin3

  • 1Department of Biology, Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.

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Summary

Directional epistasis is common and significantly impacts evolutionary dynamics. This study reveals it often constrains evolvability, particularly towards larger sizes in animals.

Keywords:
dominanceepistasisepistatic constraintevolvabilitygenotype–phenotype mapline-cross analysis

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Genetics

Background:

  • Epistasis, the interaction between genes, is often considered minor in evolution.
  • Systematic directional epistasis, however, can significantly influence evolutionary trajectories by altering gene effects and evolvability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To empirically assess the prevalence and magnitude of directional epistasis across diverse traits and species.
  • To investigate how directional epistasis affects additive genetic variance (evolvability) during evolution.

Main Methods:

  • Development of a novel framework to estimate systematic epistasis patterns from line-cross experiments.
  • Quantification of epistatic effects on 197 size-related traits in 24 animal and 17 plant species.

Main Results:

  • Directional epistasis is prevalent across a wide range of traits and species.
  • The strength of directional epistasis increases with greater morphological divergence between populations.
  • In animals, a common pattern of negative directionality was observed for traits related to size, suggesting constraints on evolvability towards larger sizes.

Conclusions:

  • Directional epistasis plays a substantial role in shaping evolutionary dynamics and can impose constraints on trait evolution.
  • The findings challenge the notion of epistasis being unimportant and highlight its significance in understanding evolutionary processes.